This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Women A Cultural Review 29:2 2018 on 25 May 2018 available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwcr20/29/2 doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2018.1447039 The special relationship and the allure of transatlantic travel in the work of Elinor Glyn KAREN RANDELL ALEXIS WEEDON Abstract: Winston Churchill famously said the United Kingdom and the United States of America had ‘special relationship’. This paper takes a look at Elinor Glyn’s Atlantic travel in her life and in her novels, and her visits to America drawing on her archives, memoir, magazine articles and contemporary newspaper reports of her trips. Her novel Six Days (1924) was adapted into a popular silent film which was exhibited in Europe and the USA. It’s combination of love and romance, transatlantic travel on the Cunard liner, secret military mission and political co-operation is taken an example how the special relationship between the USA and the UK has been depicted in romance novels. It draws parallels between the movies 6 Days (Goldwyn, Brabin, 1923) and Titanic (Cameron, 1997). This paper was a keynote at the Love Across the Atlantic conference, University of Roehampton, June 2017. Keywords: Elinor Glyn, Romance novels, Three Weeks, Six Days, American divorce, William Randolph Hearst, Vanderbilt, Olympic, Titanic, liner, Cunard White Star, transatlantic travel, 1912, 1920s In June 2017 we were invited to give the keynote address at the Love Across the Atlantic conference held at the University of Roehampton.1 Elinor Glyn seemed like 1 Many thanks to Deborah Jermyn for inviting us to present at this one day conference, organised by the Sex, Gender and Sexuality research group, University of Roehampton and New College, University of Alabama. 1 the perfect subject for a keynote that would offer discussion and debate on the way in which the contemporary notion of the ‘special relationship’ between the USA and the UK was, as we see it, predicated on love, rather than politics.2 What follows is a version of that keynote made less idiosyncratic but keeping with the nuances and amusements of our own particular approaches to exploring this fascinating and prolific writer. [[insert section break/gap]] In her memoir, Elinor Glyn, the British romantic novelist, filmmaker, glamour icon and business woman, recalled her first trip to America in 1908: it seemed a very big adventure to be thus travelling about by myself, in the role of "Elinor Glyn the famous authoress", instead of in the company of my husband ... I felt independent and gay...Until that moment I had been merely a private person, who happened to write books when she felt inclined.(Glyn 1936: 138) In 1907 Glyn had immediate popular success in Britain with her eighth novel, a popularity which travelled to the states where it got caught up in the heated debate on marriage laws. Her novel entitled Three Weeks was about an affair between a Balkan Queen and young Englishman. The mix of royalty, old Europe, English aristocracy and Elinor’s own personal beauty and history were an attractive combination for the newshounds who met her. As soon as Cunard’s Mauritania docked in New York, she began to learn: It appeared that the most fantastic stories had been printed while we were yet at sea. I myself was the heroine of Three Weeks, it was said, and one paper even published a number of names (derived from the "Peerage ", I imagine) of probable "Pauls ". This avalanche so confused me that I fear I had no sensible answers ready to the usual pertinent questions: "What did I think of America ? What were my views on American divorce? How long was I going to stay? What had I come for? Would I tell the struggles of my early life? How did I react to the change from obscurity to fame? " (Glyn 1938: 139) Glyn was accompanied by Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, and they were invited to Mrs Vanderbilt’s stately home at Hyde Park on the Hudson. As she said in her 2 The phrase first used by Winston Churchill in 1946 2 memoirs, she had a love of ‘such things as fine buildings, splendid rooms, rich silks and blazing jewels, adorning handsome, soigné men and lovely, carefree women.’ (Glyn 1936: 339). A love which had been fashioned in Europe, now met the moneyed families of old New York. Elinor was awe-struck by the house. Anthony Glyn her grandson explained: A long flight of marble steps led from the drive to the front door, and on every third step was a footman in knee-breeches and with powdered hair drenched in the pouring rain. The guests were ... lead through a series of salons to a great drawing room where their hostess was waiting to receive them, magnificently gowned and wearing some fifty thousand pounds’ worth of pearls and long white kid gloves. (Glyn 1955: 137) Elinor was less enamoured by the conversation, quips went unanswered and there was little of the dalliance she had come to expect in English country houses. Later when Glyn went to California she became an intimate of William Randolph Hearst and ‘upholding equally the need for joyous earthly love and its fulfilment’ accompanied his mistress Marion Davies, she saw there the ‘pagentry and show’ which the Chief’s castle had in abundance. America simply dazzled her, and she embraced it. (Glyn 1936) The trip in 1908 was not the first time Glyn had crossed the Atlantic. As a child of eight she had come from Canada to Jersey leaving her Ontario ranch to stay at Richlieu, a manor house on the channel island, with her step-father. This early voyage had brought the family from a French Canadian rural existence in new world to a middle-class upbringing in the old. Underpinning this first transatlantic crossing were both economic necessity and marriage, two imperatives which linked this crossing with her many subsequent ones. In fact, when in the new century Elinor sailed from England to New York, she did so as the family breadwinner. Having married into the aristocracy, she found that her husband had given her entré into this privileged world but at a price. While Clayton Glyn gambled away his fortune, Elinor took up her pen to pay the household bills and put her observations into her writing. A year later she published Elizabeth visits America. Her young heroine writes home to her: Dearest Mamma,-- America is too quaint. Crowds of reporters came on board to interview us! We never dreamed that they would bother just private people, but it was because of the titles, I suppose. ... [Octavia] said she wanted to see all the 3 American customs and if talking to reporters was one of them, she wanted that, too. So she was sweetly gracious and never told them a word of truth. (Glyn 1909) Discriminating between truth and falsehood, sincerity and kindness was confusing: In her autobiography Elinor vividly recalled how: ‘[T]his avalanche [of questions] so confused me that I fear I had no sensible answers ready...’ So the press told stories and she tried to correct them. (Glyn 1936: 139) [Subhead] The effect of Three Weeks Her book had hit on a controversial topic: she wrote later that ‘Whether you were “for” or “against” Three Weeks was quite an important matter in the US’ that spring of 1908 (Glyn 1936: 163). The dispute which raged in public in America was about what was acceptable grounds for divorce. These differed from state to state and there was no uniform USA divorce law causing people to migrate to find their settlement (Ridley 1991). The discussion was provoked by the government’s second statistical study on divorce which showed that in the previous twenty years divorces had increased at around 30 per cent every 5 years. Glyn’s novel hinted at some of the causes: a violent marriage, an absence of children, drunkenness, civil unrest -- leaving out only bigamy and desertion. Reviewing the play by the ‘talented authoress herself’ that toured America in 1909-10 a Nabraska newspaper said: ‘No book ever written has aroused so much discussion pro and con on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as this powerful story of the unfortunate Queen, who gave her life in payment for a great happiness and yet by the sacrifice lifted a nation out of despair and at the same time inspired a man with the noblest thoughts and ambitions’ (The North Platte 1909). The scandal and romance no doubt added to the audience who in turn fell in love with the ‘scenes of old Europe’ and swooned like Paul over the bed of roses in beautiful a Venetian apartment. 4 [[Insert fig 1]] Figure 1. Two frames from A Romance of a Queen (Crosland, MGM 1924) the film adaptation of Elinor Glyn’s Three weeks (1907). Paul Verdayne 5 reclines on a bed of roses in the Venetian apartment and the Queen demonstrating her love for her people. Frame grabs from author’s copy of A Romance of a Queen from Gosfilmofond archive, Moscow. Yet romance and its special relationship Glyn saw transcended class She defined that ‘special something’ in a person which gave them a sexual allure and charisma as ‘it’. Anyone could have ‘It’. ‘It’ was daring, self-confident, playful, a swagger just kept within social bounds by ‘individual discipline’. It could be self-taught. Glyn, herself, had ‘it’ and found ‘it’ in when she went west to the Nevada gold mining camp. The papers reported: In the ... biggest gaming place in the camp, she wagered [two hundred dollars] on faro [sic].